BOULDER — A Boulder jury Friday evening found Molly Midyette guilty of child abuse resulting in death after determining that she failed to seek help for her badly injured infant son.
As the verdict was read, Midyette’s husband, Alex, began cursing the prosecutors and was removed from the courtroom. Molly Midyette mouthed the words “my life is over,” before she was led away, according to 9News.
She faces up to 48 years in prison when sentenced in February.
Alex Midyette will stand trial next month on charges of physically abusing their son, Jason, causing dozens of broken bones and severe brain injuries that prosecutors said were evident in the days before the 10-week-old was finally taken to a hospital, where he was placed on life support and died two days later in March 2006.
During closing arguments Friday, prosecutors focused on how Molly Midyette had to have known her son was being abused, yet failed to seek emergency treatment.
“She knew he was seriously injured, and she refused to act,” said Deputy District Attorney Colette Cribari in closing arguments. “That’s what led to his death.”
Midyette claimed on the stand Thursday that she never knew the baby was injured, although an autopsy showed Jason’s severe injuries, including brain trauma, had happened at three or more different times.
A law-school graduate, Midyette remained emotionless through four hours of closing arguments, then appeared to search the faces of the jury members to make eye contact as Boulder County District Judge Lael Montgomery explained the verdict form to jurors before dismissing them to deliberate at about 1 p.m.
Defense attorney Craig Truman told jurors in his closing statement that Jason had visited his pediatrician six times in his short life and that Dr. Jill Siegfried had not detected the problems.
“How was Molly to know when the doctors who examined Jason didn’t know?” Truman said.
But Cribari said Midyette never told her doctor about bruises, seizures, a limp arm, a bleeding mouth and other signs of trouble with the child.
Midyette claimed she did tell her doctor those things.
The prosecutor said Midyette’s testimony on Thursday was riddled with inconsistencies, conflicts and statements that aren’t “supported by common sense” about the severe pain such a badly injured child would have exhibited.
“She contradicts her own mother, in a number of ways,” Cribari said of the witness called to bolster Midyette’s case.
Cribari said evidence showed that Molly Midyette had a “disconnect” with the child, focused more on the details of her own suffering during childbirth than the needs or injuries of Jason once he was born. The prosecutor reminded jurors of an e-mail Midyette sent a former boyfriend three days after the delivery, saying she had been in a “car accident.”
Cribari told jurors about the baby’s room in the Midyettes’ Louisville home, with no decorations, no crib and stuffed animals surrounding the baby on a bed.
On the day the injuries were discovered by authorities, Midyette had gone to work. She told co-workers about Jason’s symptoms, which the prosecutor said were oblivious signs of seizures. She went home at lunch after a call from her husband. When the Midyettes called the doctor’s office, they got a return message to take Jason to an emergency room or an urgent-care facility.
Instead, they waited a few more hours to take the child to his pediatrician because Molly Midyette testified earlier that filling out insurance forms at the hospital would have taken too long. Though the child was gray and unresponsive, the Midyettes put him in a car seat in the backseat, facing away from them, and both rode in the front.
Prosecutors also reminded jurors that Molly Midyette was talking to an attorney about a defense strategy within earshot of a social worker while the baby was being examined at Children’s Hospital in Denver.
“To her, that baby was already dead,” Cribari said. “… That’s a lawyer talking, not a mom talking about her baby.”
The Midyettes married in 2005 after Molly became pregnant, and they remain a couple, though with separate lawyers.
Truman told jurors he believed Alex Midyette was abusing the child, though Molly Midyette still believes her husband did not.
Cribari seized on the statement in her rebuttal.
“She’s protecting him because she knew he was abusing that baby, and she did nothing,” Cribari said, adding later: “She’s not here to protect Alex. She’s here to protect herself.”
The Associated Press contributed to this story
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com
